by Lindsey Hart
She brushed past Jack, far too aware of how near he was, on her way to the sink to rinse the beans in a strainer. She was willing to bet her house that his eyes tracked her every movement. That wild heat, rapid pulse and uneven breathing she’d come to associate with his presence, only got worse.
“Why are you a vegan?”
Good. A question I can actually answer. It wasn’t a dangerous question. It was something easy. Something that she had answered throughout her entire life. She turned, strainer in hand, about to launch into a few dozen good reasons.
The look on Jack’s face stopped her cold. Those eyes locked with hers and she recognized the hot, hard male hunger there. His desire for her washed over the kitchen. She breathed in sharply and scented the sharp male musk that was suddenly present. The smell of Jack. A thick, spooling heaviness hit the pit of her stomach like a brick. Her skin felt far too tight for her body. The wetness that pooled lower made her very, very aware that the man right beside her, the incredible specimen of a male, probably solid muscle if that incredible back of his was any indication, wanted her.
He didn’t move. They said nothing. Not one word. He reached out slowly, so very slowly, with feline grace and took the strainer out of her hand. He set it down on the countertop and watery black bean juice seeped through the bottom slowly. The puddle spread wider and wider.
“I’ve never kissed a woman before.” Jack’s voice came out a little strangled, thick, hard. Raspy, like his throat was as raw as his back.
How the hell could that be possible? She saw the truth in his eyes. “Because you’ve never wanted to. It would have to be that. Or… well… maybe you don’t find women attractive.”
“I find you attractive.”
Luna wished she could move. Run. Flee. Away. To him. Out the door. No, she’d much rather wrap her arms around his neck and tangle her body with his as she taught him, impossibly, what it was to find passion in an embrace. A kiss. A single touch.
“It’s been a few years myself,” Luna confessed. “Do you- want to try it? Is that why you’re here- right now?”
Silence. The quiet stretched on between them. The puddle beneath the beans grew. The fridge buzzed annoyingly. The kitty cat clock on the will ticked off the seconds. “I don’t know,” he finally said on a hard inhale. “I’m afraid of what will happen if we do.”
“Aren’t we all?” She couldn’t wait any longer. She’d tortured herself, all last night, and tonight. Hours that stretched on, inking skin she’d rather caress, explore, taste. She had to know what it was about Jack that drove her to distraction. That awoke all the things inside of her that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. If ever.
She closed the distance between them with two small steps, reached out, wrapped her hands around that granite pillar of muscle that was his neck. Her fingers hit the soft fuzz of blonde hair at the base of his neck. He leaned down, his lips only a breath away. She had one second to pull back. One second to stop the crash course her life had suddenly taken on. She was careening out of control, but for once she wanted to be dangerous. She wanted to let her guard down, even if it shattered her. She wanted him, wanted this. Craved this connection.
So she didn’t pull away. When his lips slanted over hers, warm, moist, delicious and sensual, her mouth parted in a response just as eager.
CHAPTER 10
Jack braced himself for it. For the onslaught of panic. The rapid breath. The sweating palms. The horrible prickling itch just under his skin that always threatened to drive him mad whenever he got close to another person. The panic, the rage, the revulsion. Tightening of the stomach or chest.
What he felt was a whole lot of nothing. Silence. Peace. And then the steady burn, the wash of raw, animal lust. He wasn’t used to feeling either of those things but the underlying tenderness there, squeezing his chest, creeping into his heart and spreading from there to his blood stream and suffusing every cell and nerve ending and limb.
Luna’s lips were soft. The only other word he could think of in that moment to describe her mouth was… delicious. Okay, so astounding, incredible, amazing, mind blowing, body numbing… any of those descriptors would also work.
She pulled away, gazing at him questioningly. The heat of her touch remained, firing his body, pushing his heart into overdrive. What the hell was going on with him? He’d never experienced a reaction like that before. It was like all the negative shit, all the route, mechanical actions he’d classified as sex or connection, no longer had the power to touch him.
“So… how was that?” The expression on Luna’s face, the wonder she tried to keep out of her eyes and the tenderness she too obviously felt, told him she really hoped he would respond positively.
Jack reached up and touched his lips, which were still tingling. “I… it was-”
“Yah. I know,” she finished helpfully. “Want to try it again?”
Hell, do I ever. It was like being asked if he wanted to continue to breathe. All his life, Jack had avoided other people. He now knew why. No woman, no single other woman on earth, was Luna. This moment, this first experience of tenderness, touch and connection, was reserved for her and her alone.
Neither of them needed words. They both realized they were starving and the forgotten food on the countertop factored into the equation not at all. Their hunger was a physical one, a starvation of bodies too long deprived.
His mouth slanted over hers, hard, needy. Shocking the hell out of him when he responded like a man completely starved. Every single inch of him came alive, like a light bulb being turned on for the very first time. His life where every single moment of every year he lived he thought had pushed him beyond the point of connection, beyond redeeming. Beyond this.
Jack explored her mouth again, his tongue pushing past her lips, delving in to enjoy the sweetness of her, a taste that was all woman, again and again. She moaned, low and deep in her throat. He swallowed the sound, tasted her breath, stole it, breathed it into his lungs. She’s already a part of me. I never want this to end. God, I never want to let go.
Luna moaned again. Her body pressed into him, her lush breasts with the fully erect nipples grinding against his chest. He clued in then, to the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. His body jerked hard with raw, wild need. Whatever he was feeling, the unnamed emotion that he never thought was for him, kicked up a notch. His heart tightened, pounded hard, wildly.
When she pulled away, the question burning in her eyes, she didn’t have to speak the words. She turned, not waiting for him. She already knew he would follow.
Jack put his feet in motion. Not running out the door like he thought he would want to. No, he propelled himself in the direction Luna had just gone. He followed in her wake, imagined the scent of her perfume and desire thick and heady in the air. He breathed in, filled his burning lungs.
Luna’s footsteps sounded on the stairs above. Jack walked through the house in some kind of trance. He took in everything. The ancient, quirky mismatched furniture, eccentric, bright, recovered pieces, the art that took up every single portion of the wall space, the original hardwood floors and radiators from another era.
His foot hit the first tread and he knew he was lost.
The problem was he never wanted to be found.
CHAPTER 11
Jack stood in the bedroom doorway, looking as unsure, almost afraid, as Luna had ever seen him. His eyes were wide, the blue nearly consumed by the black in the centre.
She realized that he was waiting. Debating with himself or waiting for her. She knew this wasn’t a first for him. Not this exactly. But tenderness, certainly. He had never been touched kindly, with compassion. With true passion? She didn’t know.
Luna swallowed down all her own feelings of inadequacy, her own hesitation. She’d left Jarod so many years ago. Protected herself all those years against feeling anything. She still wanted to protect herself. The fear of being hurt again, of opening herself up was still very real. She didn’t even fully know what she
was doing.
It was just… Jack. Since the first time she’d touched his shoulder with her gloved hand, no, since the first time she’d laid eyes on him, she knew that she wanted him. Now that she’d really touched him, kissed him, aroused all the buried, repressed passion inside of herself, she wanted this. She needed him so badly it was a physical ache.
Jack stepped forward, as though he truly wanted to be there. He paused again, battling his own demons and Luna knew then, the courage it took for him to even be there. To reach out. To shock himself with the realization that it was possible to enjoy the very thing he’d feared.
She knew exactly what he felt and her heart melted as compassion stirred her. She forced a hard, shaky breath, suddenly aware that she was perilously close to crying. Her feet were moving before she was even conscious of it happening.
Jack tensed when Luna closed in, wrapped her arms around his waist. She looked up into those amazing eyes of his. They stared back at her, so very old, old beyond Jack’s years.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know what you’re feeling. It’s so hard. I… I tried very hard to make sure I didn’t feel anything again. It was safer that way. And now, I- I do feel this. I can’t even name it, but I want it.” She reached up and traced the outline of his lips. He leaned into her touch, so very hesitantly. His eyes closed and he sighed, a sigh that shook his entire frame.
The unfamiliarity of him, the discovery was so exciting that Luna nearly shook as a shiver raced through her body. She’d seen that gorgeous chest, his beautiful back. She wanted more. She wanted all of him. She wanted to trace the pattern of his skin, learn the shape of his muscle, hear the very sounds he made in the throes of passion. Sounds she brought out of him.
“We can go slow,” she whispered huskily, her voice heavy and almost unrecognizable. “I promise that you’re safe with me.”
Jack let out a low groan. She wasn’t sure what it even meant. His eyes closed and stayed that way. His body melted into hers.
“Yes,” he finally whispered.
She sensed he wasn’t a man who threw words around easily. Who words came easy to. That one word, just one, held all the promise in the world.
Her hands hooked under the hem of his t-shirt and she pushed it up, careful of the gauze she’d placed on his back. He lifted his arms, slowly, because the movement caused him pain. His back was probably screaming in protest and here she was, about to do this with him. It only made that feeling, that drive to bring him pleasure that much stronger. She wanted to cancel out the pain. Both the seen and the unseen. The physical and the mental, the emotional. She wanted to erase the hurt in his heart. And in my own.
Luna didn’t even know where to start. Just this. Just do this. His shirt was thrown to the floor. She stared, unembarrassed, at the beautiful lines and ridges of his purely male anatomy. The power in his striated, perfectly formed muscles. The swell and dips, the gentle crests and valleys of a body so very different from her own.
It was exciting. God, it was exciting just looking at him. A wave of raw need washed over Luna, nearly buckling her legs. She reached out and her fingertips grazed his warm, solid muscle. She traced the swells, the textbook beauty come to life. He trembled, but it passed as quickly as it had come.
Luna leaned forward. Touching him wasn’t enough. She flattened her palm above his heart, the steady rhythm quicker than it should have been, giving away all the internal flutter that was going on behind that stoic flesh. Luna leaned in. She inhaled deeply and scented the strong musk of dried sweat and raw masculinity. It was… erotic.
Her body responded instantly, viscerally, her nipples hardening under her camisole, a heavy weight growing in her belly, spreading lower, wetness pooling between her thighs.
She brought her other hand up, tilting her face because she needed him. She needed his mouth, solid and heavy and lusty on her own, sucking away at her breath, swallowing her moans.
Her fingers grazed the shorter hair, the soft buzzed part and tangled in the longer strands. She cupped the back of his head as his neck bent and his mouth found hers. His breath, warm and fragrant, so very sweet against her lips, just one breath before his lips parted and met hers, was so completely erotic it sent a fresh wave of shivers through Luna.
His mouth opened to her and she took the opportunity. Let her tongue sweep in. Exploring. Delving in and back and darting in again. Finding his and stroking it. She awoke the primal urges in both of them, the very same long buried emotions she felt in the kitchen.
His hands were on her body, stripping away her shirt, exposing her camisole. She fumbled with him, tearing that away as well. He groaned and she gasped when his hand found her breast, caressing her nipple. It hardened wickedly under his touch, a tight peak that sent shards of pleasure crashing through her with every graze, every circle, every flick of his fingers.
God, I want him. She’d never wanted anything so bad in her life. She imagined herself stretched out on the bed, his hard body over her, taking her, loving her. Desire washed over her, heady and thick. She brought her hand up, traced the thick lines of his shoulders, kneaded her fingers there, so very softly into the hardness of him.
It wasn’t a sexual touch at all but he shuddered. Trembled. Moaned deep in his throat. Her hand fell away from his head and trailed downwards, tracing the hard outline of his chest, fumbling in between where their bodies were crushed together. She found the button of his jeans, then the zipper. Her fingers were surer than she ever thought they could be. She stripped his jeans away, pushing them down his granite hips.
She should have been fearful, hesitant even. She certainly expected him to be. Luna was surprised when his hands met hers, helped her strip away his boxers. He broke away to remove them completely. Their breath was ragged, hard, gaspy. Her world shifted, tilted wildly when she stared at the wonder of his naked body.
Luna didn’t hesitate once to strip her own jeans away. She stepped from them, took one pace back before she hooked her fingers under the waistband of her red lace panties and slid them down her thighs. She should have been embarrassed. Scared. Timid. She should have had the trust and the desire to be with another person beaten out of her long ago.
She wasn’t. Whatever it was, whatever spell had settled over her, overrode everything. Good sense, hesitation, fear, uncertainty. All she felt in that moment, that charged moment where the very air became thick with desire and hard breath, was desire. Raw, stripped down desire as she’d never known it before.
She waited. She wanted to keep her promise to take it slow. Luna let him make the first move. She let Jack decide if he truly wanted to go through with this or not. Because she sensed that they both knew there was no going back. This moment, this action, is going to change us forever. It didn’t make sense but it didn’t have to.
Luna extended her hand in invitation. Jack stepped forward and slowly, his palm curled around hers, his long, strong fingers tangling with hers in a grasp that could save them both. She turned towards the bed at the same time that the liquid heat in the pit of her stomach exploded, flooding her entire being with something she couldn’t even name. Something she’d never felt before in her entire life.
CHAPTER 12
Jack’s brain was working overtime. His heart pumped blood so hard the thing had to be firing on all cylinders, just like the rest of his body. He felt something- raw, animalistic, perfect. He’d been so damn afraid of this his entire life, truly letting himself go, letting himself be. He’d been trained to understand that feeling anything meant the end of survival. The best way to remain alive on the streets of Detroit was to feel nothing at all.
The deluge of emotion that swept through his bloodstream was numbed out just a little by passion. The desire that unfurled in his stomach, spread to every single nerve ending and made him hard as a fucking rock cancelled out the panic in his brain. The urge to run and never look back. He still felt it. All those years of training didn’t just vanish in the blink of an eye. It was just that… Lu
na cut through it all. She cut through, like an arrow, straight to the heart of him.
The sensation was nearly overwhelming. The urge to feel. To let himself go and just let himself be.
Luna’s hand in his grounded him. She led him to the edge of her bed and waited, her eyes shining with anticipation. The need on her face was an aphrodisiac all on its own. Did she understand just what that look did to him? How the scent of her undid him? That clean, feminine, beautiful scent of her skin. That heady, womanly musk of desire beading at the juncture of her thighs. God, her sex was perfect. Hairless. Utterly captivating and thrilling and wholly beautiful.
Her body was covered in more ink than he’d ever seen on a woman. Not just her arms but above her breasts, below, her belly, her legs. It was somehow deeply sexy, knowing that she could withstand so much pain. That she wanted it. How many of those tattoos had she done to herself? His fingers itched to touch them, memorize them, learn every single detail.
He lowered his face back down to hers where those perfectly lush lips were open, parted just a fraction in invitation. God, if he kissed her for the rest of his life it wouldn’t be long enough. It was strange, he’d never truly cared about dying before. It was always a distinct possibility. The shadow of death. And then, even when he had money, he didn’t truly care. It was something he’d made peace with a long time ago. He was far more afraid of living.
Those lips, that kiss, her body made him want to. It made him want to experience the thrill of truly feeling, of truly being alive. He tasted her again, his hand moving automatically, instinctually, to caress her silken skin, the womanly curves that were so very different from his own body and so thrilling.
Jack was changed, transformed, into something he had always wanted to be. He understood for the first time in his existence, what it meant to truly become one with another person. To find a plane of connection so sacred it could never exist until just the right moment, with the right person.